E-Mail NYU Oral Cancer Center has been awarded a five-year, $3.1 million grant (R01 CA231396) by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The principal investigators, Donna Albertson, PhD, and Brian Schmidt, DDS, MD, PhD, seek to improve oral cancer treatment and alleviate pain by better understanding how a subset of nerves that possess a receptor called TRPV1 on the cell membrane contribute to cancer progression and pain. Oral cancer patients have a poor prognosis and endure debilitating pain. Albertson and Schmidt have been investigating oral cancer at the molecular level for nearly two decades to address these pressing clinical challenges.